A Study on Thermal Comfort Assessment Frameworks and Models in Cities

Abstract

Considering the increasing trends of urbanization, climatic change, and air temperature in cities, the issue of urban heat island mitigation for ensuring thermal comfort is of high importance. Enhancing thermal comfort also has implications for human health, well-being, and productivity. In recent decades, several assessment frameworks and models have been proposed to measure and predict thermal comfort in cities. This chapter tries to explore major assessment frameworks and models that explain and measure thermal comfort in cities by considering physical, physiological, psychological, and behavioral dimensions. It shows that thermal comfort models could be divided into two major categories, namely, knowledge-based thermal comfort methods and data-driven thermal comfort models. Each of these two has subset models for thermal comfort testing in cities. The findings indicate that recent trends in measuring thermal comfort are focused on data-driven models based on simulation algorithms.